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THE USE OF ROLE-PLAY ACTIVITIES IN
IMPROVING SPEAKING SKILLS OF
FIRST-YEAR CHEMISTRY-MAJORS AT
HANOI UNIVERSITY OF INDUSTRY
Nguyễn Thị Thúy Nga
Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ
Luận văn ThS. Chuyên ngành: English Teaching Methodology; Mã số: 60 14 10
Người hướng dẫn: Nguyen Thi Bach Thao M.A.
Năm bảo vệ: 2011
Abstract: The context of international integration and development has attached increasing
importance to communication in general and oral communication in particular. Oral
communication skills or speaking skills therefore have become the focus of language teaching as
far as the objectives of English course of the Faculty of Chemistry, Hanoi University of Industry
(HaUI) are concerned. With a lot of advantages, role-play is considered one of the most potential
activities to help students promote their speaking skills. As one of the first attempts to explore
the application of using role-play in speaking classroom for a specific group of learners, namely
first-year chemistry-majors, this paper sheds light on both the students and teachers’ attitude
towards using role-play, the difficulties they encounter as well as suggestions for utilizing this
kind of activity effectively. To achieve the aims of the study, a survey was conducted with 120
first-year chemistry-majors and twenty teachers being involved. To enhance the quality of
information collected from the questionnaire and help the researcher provide more details to the
findings, interviews were employed. The results of this research show many positive signs in
students and teachers’ attitude towards using role-play in improving speaking skills. By
identifying the difficulties they face, the paper suggests some changes in the students’
participation, the teachers’ roles during role-play activities as well as alteration of the
management board. The study is of great use to those who want to find an effective way of using
role-play to teach speaking skills and thanks to it, students will be more interested in learning
speaking to gain a better result.
Keywords: Tiếng Anh; Phương pháp giảng dạy; Kỹ năng nói
Content
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
This initial chapter presents the rationale, purpose, scope, significance, research methods and
design of the study. Above all, it is in this chapter that the research questions are identified to
work as clear guidelines for the whole research.
1.1. Rationale
Nowadays, when Vietnam is on the way to regional and global integration, a demand for training
students as competent communicators has been generated for Vietnamese education in general
and foreign language education in particular. A high proficiency of spoken English becomes not
only an academic goal but one of the crucial keys to a guarantee of a successful career.
However, there exists one problem that teachers and students of English in Vietnam cope with:
the target language is mainly used in the classroom and learners have few opportunities to use
English in authentic contexts outside the classroom. This problem sets a challenging task for
teachers of English in Vietnam, that is to design communicative activities which can provide
students with “real” contexts for negotiating meaning so that they can develop communicative
competence.
This requires some changes in teaching approach from traditional ones which put emphasis on
the production of accurate grammatical sentences into CLT approach which focuses on
developing learners’ communicative competence, i.e. the ability to communicate through
language. In CLT, learner-learner interaction is paid more attention with such classroom tasks as
problem solving, decision – making, opinion exchange, picture dictation and jig saw tasks, etc.
However, if teachers want to make these tasks beneficial and motivating to students, they should
take into consideration the following questions raised by Hedge (2002: 263, cited in Rong, R &
Lanying, X. 2008):
1. Which activities encourage participation from all students and so ensure that they all
get practice opportunities?
2. Which activities oblige negotiation of meaning?
In order to determine the effectiveness of classroom activities, a search for teachers and students’
perception of these activities is necessary otherwise students may undervalue the tasks assigned
by teachers if there are any differences between their beliefs and teachers’ ones, which may
cause students’ inactive participation and gradual loss of motivation in learning.
Considered an integral part of English learning, “communicative task” has been introduced at
HaUI but implementing it is not a simple work. Proper pedagogical tasks are of significance to
the effectiveness of English course here. However, little research has been carried out on this
topic. Hence, there exists a gap which the current study will be aimed at bridging.
The above reasons have urged the author to conduct a study to gain more insight into the current
situation of using classroom activities with a focus on role-play tasks and try to draw some
implications for using role-play to improve speaking skills for 1st-year students at the Faculty of
Chemistry – Hanoi University of Industry (FC - HaUI). It is hoped that this study will lay a
foundation on which subsequent research into this matter is based and developed.
1.2. Aims of the study
Firstly, this research is carried out in order to investigate the reality of applying role-play
activities in teaching speaking skills to 1st-year students at the Faculty of Chemistry – Hanoi
University of Industry. Additionally, it is planned to explore students and teachers’ attitude
towards role-play activities as well as the difficulties in using these activities in improving
speaking skills.
In brief, the research paper seeks the answers to the following questions:
a. What is the current situation of using role-play activities to teach speaking to 1st-year
students at the Faculty of Chemistry – Hanoi University of Industry?
b. What are teachers and students’ attitude towards using role-play activities in speaking
lessons?
c. What are the difficulties in using role-play activities to teach speaking skills to 1st-year
chemistry majors at HaUI?
d. What are implications of making role-play activities successful in speaking class of 1styear FC students?
1.3. Scope of the study
Within the scope of a graduation paper and due to the limitation of time, the study is confined to
the Faculty of Chemistry, Hanoi University of Industry with focus on first-year chemistry
majors. Moreover, although role-play activities could be used extensively in different contexts
and for different purposes, the study is dealing with role-play in developing speaking skills only.
1.4. Significance of the study
The study is carried out with the intention to provide teachers of English at FC – HaUI with a
deeper understanding of using role-play activities in teaching speaking skills. In addition, it is
hoped that the study will be of great significance in helping teachers find an effective way to
increase their students’ participation in speaking lessons as well as supply them with successful
communication outside classrooms.
1.5. Methods of the study
Questionnaires and interviews will be utilized to collect data for the whole paper. A survey is
done by delivering a questionnaire to 20 teachers of English and another questionnaire to 120
first-year students at FC- HaUI who are being taught speaking skills under the process-based
approach.
After completing questionnaires, those who are willing to give further response on the issue will
be invited to take part in semi-structured interviews.
All the collected information and data are then analyzed and discussed.
1.6. Design of the study
The thesis consists of four chapters as follows:
Chapter 1 provides a general introduction, including the rationale for the research and its aim,
significance, scope, research questions and the design of the thesis.
Chapter 2 is an attempt to review some theoretical background for the study. The two underlying
theories: communicative approach and cooperative learning - the background for role-play
activities to occur are discussed. In addition, the theory of teaching speaking and an overview of
role-play activities are also presented.
Chapter 3 presents the methodology of the study, including the background information of the
context where the study is conducted, the subjects, the instruments used to collect data, and the
procedures of data collection. Furthermore, a detailed description of data analysis is presented;
and some explanations and interpretations of the findings of the study are given in this chapter.
Chapter 4 is the conclusion of the study, providing some pedagogical implications. The
limitations of the study as well as some suggestions for further research are also discussed in this
chapter.
Summary
In this first chapter, the following points have been discussed:
(a) The rationale for the study
(b) Aims of the study
(c) Scope of the study
(d) Significance of the study
(e) Methods of the study
(f) Design of the study
These issues have not only justified the major contents and structures of the study but will also
work as the guidelines for the rest of the paper
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